Germany

ETFs on the Deutsche Borse


Officials at Deutsche Borse report becoming the first investment concern to achieve what is considered to be the "holy grail" of the exchange traded funds business, an actively-managed investment that trades with the fluid qualities of a stock and offers the diversification of a mutual fund. Deutsche’s U.S. competitors at the American Stock Exchange stated plans to launch their version of the active ETF sometime in mid-2001.

The first active German ETFs are offered through DWS Investment, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank, which initially launched 11 funds on November 20. The initial launch group included sector investments such as biotech/internet and country funds. A statement from Borse conveys that Asian and European funds are also forthcoming.

Borse became the first European exchange to create a separate trading platform for ETFs, XTF Exchange Traded Funds, in April, 2000. XTF Exchange initially listed two products, referred to as the STOXX indexes, while providing the framework for a more robust market that is accessible to brokers and individual investors.

More information about Borse’s listed ETFs is available at its Web site, www.exchangetradedfunds.de.